


shake my ash to the wind

by jumpfall



Series: Rescue 'Verse [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: #coulsonlives, Avenger!Pepper, F/M, Iron Man 3 Spoilers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-08
Updated: 2013-06-08
Packaged: 2017-12-14 06:00:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/833560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jumpfall/pseuds/jumpfall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Getting Coulson back is going to be anything but easy. Appendicitis, twenty questions, clones, and reincarnations: all in a day's work for the Avengers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	shake my ash to the wind

**Author's Note:**

> Title credit to 'Lover's Eyes' by Mumford & Sons.
> 
> Content warnings: not a Loki redemption fic, depictions of violence, psychological games.
> 
> This carries on from the events of 'babel, babel, look at me now' in which Pepper joined the Avengers as Rescue, now with Clint/Coulson! Beyond that plot point, reading that one is not necessary to follow the events of this one.

“I need a pickup,” Clint yells. Pepper skids to a stop immediately, nearly taking out a low-flying pigeon in her path. His tone of voice is telling enough seeing as Hawkeye has previously jumped off of buildings without raising his voice above a morning ‘where is the coffee’ tone.

He’s already in the air when she reaches the scene, head ducked to avoid the shots being fired from behind him. She drops in underneath him, killing the thrusters to throw her arms out wide. The force of his landing on her flat back knocks her off course, and the HUD throws up proximity alarms as they take a corner at speed, veering wildly until she smooths out. He slings himself around to her front and she wraps an arm around his waist to brace him.

“Widow needs backup,” she tells him once they’re face to faceplate.

“Then let’s dive,” he says back, grinning.

“Five seconds,” she says. In response, he wraps his legs around her hips in a vice grip to brace himself and free his hands, drawing an arrow back in the space above her shoulder. She angles herself downwards and pushes the thrusters for as much speed as they’ll give her, spiralling to compensate for the lack of control that comes with only being able to use one arm. He takes out two targets with one explosive arrow as she pulls out of the dive in a sharp arc, the trajectory impossible to imagine but his aim as true as ever.

She drops him in beside Natasha to even the odds. It’s currently 5:1 and she’s pulling ahead, but it never hurts to be sure.

“I’ve located Thor,” Steve says in her ear, voice crystal clear despite the distance that separates them. They lost Thor when the building he was standing on went down all of a sudden, shortly followed by his disappearance from the comms.

“So have I,” Tony replies.

“He’s dazed but otherwise appears to be okay.”

“There’s five other life signs trapped under there with him, we’re going to have to do this carefully. Cap, I need you to keep that cinder block stable while I clear a path through the rubble.”

Not fifty feet below her, Pepper sees the Hulk set a broken display case on one of the combatants like he’s a bug in a glass jar. Bruce gave in when Thor went down in a clipped shout of immeasurable pain, green from the moment he stepped out of the SHIELD command truck to join the battle.

“You’re clear to cut, Iron Man,” Steve says, a note of strain to his voice. Knowing the Captain, he’s taken ‘keep this stable’ to mean ‘with your body.’ His go-ahead is shortly followed by the sizzle of Tony’s lasers slicing easily through that which would take traditional search and rescue teams hours to dent.

She lands in a crouch on a rooftop, gazing off into the distance to the building where this operation is taking place. Steve and Tony are well on the other side of the city, not even five minutes out at top speed but still too far to continue providing aerial support for Clint and Natasha.

“Widow?”

“We’ve got this, go help them,” Natasha replies. Pepper doesn’t wait for further confirmation to take off, the thrusters igniting as she takes a running jump off the rooftop, fully parallel to the ground within seconds.

“Hold,” Steve says suddenly, and the line goes silent immediately but for the crackle of radio static.

“Damn it,” Tony says, and she knows that voice, that voice means ‘why are the drones blinking?’, it means they’ve missed something and things are going to get a whole lot worse before they get better.

“We’ve got a problem,” Steve says.

“You think? Thanks for the information, I can see that, I can see that in all of its fucking three-dimensional glory, you don’t need to be a super-soldier to--.”

“Tony,” Steve says, and she feels more than she hears him quiet. She forgets that there are other people who can do that now, whose judgement Tony respects enough to give the benefit of the doubt. “Hold your position, we need to regroup. Rescue, can you--?”

“On my way,” she replies, cornering around a narrow alley wall with an almost brutal efficiency and no more than a few inches clearance, the force of the thrusters blowing a layer of built-up grime off the wall as she passes.

“No time,” Tony yells, shortly followed by the extended screech of shearing metal drowning out the voices of the other Avengers.

“Initiating audio correction,” JARVIS says, bringing a semi-transparent row of volume sliders forward on the HUD and adjusting their relative positions until Steve’s voice is audible once more, demanding a response.

She reaches the site before that comes to pass and ascends the ten floors to Steve’s position fully parallel to the building. The distinctive blue and red suit is visible from the air as the tinted glass that used to occupy the space between them lies shattered on the ground far beneath them. Steve gets to his feet slowly, hand holding pressure against his side to stem the bleeding from an unseen wound.

It’s the look in his eyes that scares her. There isn’t always a face for ‘I’m not okay’ but she recognizes one when she sees it. Tony’s knows he’s not invincible better than anyone but that doesn’t stop him from being the first one out of the plane and the last one out of the blast radius.

“Where?” she asks, heart pounding in her ears. Of the fifteen floors in the building, the top five are a lost cause and the bottom ten are beginning to cave in. She doubts the place where Steve is standing will remain safe for long.

There’s a pain in her side that she chalks up to nausea, the effect of adrenaline heightening her senses and dulling her emotions.

A dry, rasping cough comes across the line before one of the inside walls blows outwards and Pepper rushes forwards to take the worst of the scattered debris with the suit, blocking Steve from further injury. Iron Man stumbles out of the hole, carrying one person in each arm. “Fuck me, and not in the fun way,” he curses. One of his metal gauntlets is missing.

Through the hole just created, they see four remaining civilians clustered around Thor. Four? Tony said he’d registered five other life signs. Where had the sixth person come from?

“A kid crawled out of the rubble. Tony saved his life,” Steve explains.

“Friends, it is good to see you!” Thor greets them, crouched in the space between the two collapsed floors and holding the ceiling up with Mjolnir. A trickle of blood runs down his temple, and he looks like the wall is the only thing holding him upright. “I could use your assistance.”

-

Pepper gets headaches, sometimes. It’s not something she shares with Tony because seeing zebras is kind of his thing, part and parcel of the man who looks at Natasha’s jacket and thinks ‘how could I make it invisible?’, looks at Steve’s boots and thinks ‘how could I make them fly?’, looks at Clint’s arrows and thinks ‘how could I make them curve?’

(There are exploding arrows in development, but they’re not supposed to know about those. If Pepper looks at those and thinks about the Jericho and its predecessors, then he does too. The more things change, the more they stay the same.)

The pain in her side is new, though.

She places a hand to her abdomen, holding pressure. It’s red hot when she looks down, solid magma in the shape of five fingers. Her hands shakes and it sends sparks scattering against the floor, scorching perfectly round black spots into the tile where they land. When she blinks, her hand is normal again, made of flesh and cool to the touch.

 _Horses, not zebras_ , she thinks.

-

Bruce peers over the frame of his glasses at her.

“Why don’t you sit down,” he says after a long moment. She perches on the edge of a cleared off lab bench and he pulls his chair closer, still holding himself carefully apart from her.

There’s no bruising, no marks, nothing that suggests internal bleeding in any way. He examines both the sore area and the tissue around it carefully, always warning her before he touches her. While she appreciates the gesture, she can’t help but wonder if it is for her benefit or his. His hands are warm but clinical until the end, when he squeezes her shoulder. It’s the first touch she can point to as Bruce the friend rather than Bruce the doctor and still he looks as if he’s taken a liberty he shouldn’t have, unease written into the lines of his posture. She resolves to be more physically affectionate with him in the future.

“I’m going to run a blood test to confirm, but I believe you have appendicitis,” he says at last.

“What,” she says blandly, a disbelieving tone to her voice that Bruce picks up on. He scoots backwards to give her a better visual of the scan results, but she raises a hand to stop him. “JARVIS, call Tony.”

The call connects within seconds, and Tony greets her with his usual energy. “Pep, I know I said 6:00 for dinner but there’s a 53%--,”

“—93%,” JARVIS cuts in irritably. She gets the impression it’s a lecture he’s given before, most likely accompanied by a safety briefing cross-referenced with the MSDSes of the chemicals involved. Tony doesn’t appear to notice, continuing to talk over him in the same half-amused tone of voice.

“—chance that this polymer will explode if left unattended for the next five minutes. JARVIS, seal the fume hood, vent atmo and replace with pure nitrogen--.”

“I have appendicitis,” she tells him without waiting for a break in his chatter. There’s a brief pause, and then the music in the background halves in volume.

“What?” Tony says. “Seriously?”

“I know.”

“I don’t,” Bruce says.

“How is that even – oh. _Oh._ ”

“Yeah,” she says. Turning to Bruce, she explains. “Here’s the thing: I already had appendicitis. Seven years ago.”

“Your appendix got me out of a meeting with Hammer Industries, if I remember correctly,” Tony says fondly. When she called him from the hospital to let him know she wouldn’t be making the flight out, he wasn’t even on the continent. She woke up after surgery to find him asleep in the plastic chair at her bedside, head lolling over the back of the arm rest in a position that couldn’t be comfortable.

The selection of helium balloons clustered in bundles around the room suggested he’d bought out a section of the hospital gift shop, and there was a stuffed bunny tucked against her side, its paw resting over the incision. She’s pretty sure that’s where he’d gotten the idea for his Christmas gift, actually.

“Extremis really does regrow everything.”

“JARVIS, autosave drafts, freeze that which can be frozen and put Dummy on fire safety – yes, I’m leaving the room Dummy, the entire safety of the tower rests in your claw. You kids be good while I’m gone now,” he says. She doesn’t doubt he’s aware they’re still on the line, he just doesn’t care.

Two minutes later, his head pops in the door and he comes to stand by her side, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. His grip tightens when she tucks her head into his shoulder, a soft smile crossing his face. With a glance in her direction to get permission, Bruce brings up the scans for Tony to take a look at.

“As you both know, Extremis speeds up the body’s natural healing processes, regrowing any tissue it finds missing. This includes your appendix, Pepper.”

Tony snorts. “Stop laughing,” she says around a smile of her own.

“I always knew you were special,” he says. “The first person to go down in history as having appendicitis on two separate occasions.”

“Unfortunately, this isn’t something that would resolve on its own if given enough time. You’re going to need immediate surgery as the risk of it bursting increases the longer this goes untreated. While Extremis could probably heal the resulting infection, we don’t want to put that to the test unless absolutely necessary.”

The holographic scan rotates slowly before them, Pepper’s inflamed appendix glowing red in stark contrast to the blue outline of her lower intestine.

“Sir, you have an incoming call from Director Fury,” JARVIS cuts in.

“It can wait.”

“I don’t believe it can, actually.” The television to their immediate left turns on without prompting, tuned to one of the 24 hour news networks reporting on a nuclear containment breach overseas. A flick of Tony’s fingers snaps the news coverage to the left half of the screen and JARVIS fills the right with reports coming in from SHIELD and local first responders. It looks as if an earthquake knocked over a supply truck containing radioactive material just outside of a major city.

The three of them are silent when the satellite image from overhead is put up, the radius of the danger zone increasing along a projected timeline.

“You have work to do,” she says.

His dismay eases somewhat when she places a warm hand on the back of his neck, thumb rolling over the recurring knot in his shoulder blade where the neck joint in the suit locks to prevent whiplash when a force sensor is triggered. “Go, we’ll do a late dinner.”

“It’s 6:00 now,” he points out.

“Spectacularly late, then.”

He kisses her forehead. “I love you. Heal fast. Call me when you get out of surgery.”

-

Happy takes exception to the idea that someone else might drive her to the hospital.

“I’m just protecting my CEO,” he says, glancing at her in the rear view mirror. “Although I hear you’ve got that handled these days.” He sounds at once wistful and bitter, but there’s an undercurrent of fond there that reminds her of the years when they were a trio, her and Happy and Tony holding fort.

During the three months Tony spent in Afghanistan, reporters dogging their footsteps to ask if they thought Tony might compromise national security if tortured, Happy never once asked her if she thought he was coming back.

She took the call from the living room still in her pajamas and drove with Tony to the hospital. When the doctor with news on his condition came out and asked for family, they both stood up.

-

“What, did you think I would have survived the exposure from the Battle of Manhattan if the suit didn’t shield?” Tony asks, pliers braced in his teeth as he holds four multi-coloured wires apart with his fingers, bridging an electrical relay with what appears to be duct tape. “Let me disable some systems and we’ll repurpose an outdated model as containment.”

It takes Clint ten minutes to sketch out an appropriate flight plan and Steve five more to negotiate it with the appropriate authorities. Even people that didn’t grow up steeped in the patriotic iconography that he represents respond to the innate sense of respect he commands, an effect Natasha’s translations only enhance.

As their expert on radiation in general, Bruce is tasked with coordinating the public health response. The accident was far enough outside of the city that preliminary estimates suggest only minimal exposure to those on the outskirts, but the media firestorm is great enough that the hospitals will be swamped within hours.

Things come together perfectly. Within half an hour of their arrival Iron Man and Thor are lifting off with the nuclear material between them safely ensconced in a suit.

“Great work, team,” Steve says. “Let’s go home.”

And _that’s_ where the plan falls apart.

-

Pepper wakes to the ringing of her cell phone and traces the source of the sound to the bedside table out of instinct more than skill, a talent developed out of fielding many a midnight phone call.

The surgical incision has already healed over, leaving no trace. Her appendix has probably grown back by now actually. Bruce isn’t sure what the odds are that she’ll get appendicitis for a third time, but if it happens again she’s pretty sure Tony will break out the biochemistry literature again. The last time that happened he blew up one fume hood, a pair of sneakers, and more glassware than strictly called for by the experiments being performed. If they buy one more set of Erlenmeyer flasks, their next order will be free.

With this in mind, she rolls over to find out where the proverbial fire is. The most recent chime is a message from Maria Hill which reads ‘Let me know when you’re leaving, I’ll clear it with ATC and FAA.’ She wakes up fast after that, scrolling through the accumulated backlog of 18 text messages and 7 voicemails. The earliest missed call is a voicemail from Steve to wish her good luck in the surgery and a speedy recovery. The Quinjet was in the air by the time she left the tower, so he must have called from the plane en route.

Buried in the middle of them is a message from Natasha which reads ‘The third shelf of the bookcase in my living room has a false back. Safe combination 05-04-12. You’ll know it when you see it.’

Pepper blinks. Consciously, she’s aware that Natasha has a minimum of three safes scattered around her floor (and one in the penthouse, which is an open secret because she’s dropped more than a few hints to the team that it contains ammunition for them all in case the tower is invaded), but their location is closely guarded.

Natasha’s a friend, but that doesn’t mean she trusts Pepper. She’s lead far too complicated a life to trust so easily, and Pepper may not understand it (although Obadiah, she thinks, and then she kind of does) but she can respect it. Their team of Big Damn Heroes has Big Damn Issues that require careful handling, because it takes a certain kind of person to look at the worst the world has to offer and come out the other side still standing.

She thinks about what kind of ‘it’ Natasha might ask her to retrieve and what kind of situation would prevent her from getting ‘it’ herself.

Then she gets the hell out of bed. 

-

A retinal scan stops the elevator on Natasha’s floor, and Pepper waits for the click of the mesh steel net trap disabling before she steps into the living room. She’s never been here without Natasha before, and the deep purple of the walls looks somehow more intimidating without her.

Sunlight streams in through the tinted windows, casting shadows into the isolated corners of the room. Unlike the open curving walls of the penthouse Natasha’s floor is all angles, nooks and crannies built into walls which don’t quite line up. Places to hide, places to stash weapons, places to get the drop on anyone who makes it this far. Despite this menacing touch there’s a warmth to the décor, vanilla scented candles on the side table and an oversized fleece blanket draped over the back of the L-shaped couch.

Natasha once told her the appearance of home is a defence in itself. Pepper thinks there’s a greater truth to the matter, but she doubts Natasha would appreciate what Pepper would call comfort and Natasha would call a weakness.

When she opens the safe hidden behind a battered copy of George Orwell’s 1984 she finds seven boxes sitting in it, a name written in elegant black marker on the front of each. One of them is labelled Coulson. The neck of a vodka bottle sticks out of the top, and a closed envelope is taped to its side.

She sets both aside to pull out the box labelled Pepper. There’s a letter in hers as well, which reads:

> _May danger create of us heroes, may fears always have names._
> 
> _Your code word is ‘Hammeroid.’_

Pepper smiles. Even after Natalie was revealed to be Natasha and thus no longer obligated to fulfill her role with SI, she showed up to Justin Hammer’s presentation at the Stark Expo to make subtle but snide commentary with Pepper in the front row until everything went to hell in a handbasket. It was the first moment she felt a true kinship with the other woman. She hadn’t realized Natasha had felt the same way.

-

SHIELD places the Avengers in Eastern Europe, where the nuclear spill took place and they have reason to be. JARVIS places them in Scotland, which Tony hasn’t been back to since the incident with Rhodey in ’03. Pepper’s pretty sure that was a decision of their making rather than his.

Pepper goes to Scotland.

-          

On final approach, the location resolves itself to be a palatial estate positioned at the top of a hill. Only a crumbling and winding road connects the house to a back road two miles out. She lands on a moss-covered tree trunk in the moor to the south of the house, a layer of fog hiding her descent from view as much as possible. Thick droplets stick to the metal of the suit as she surveys the location. Though it’s fully waterproof, an imagined shiver runs through her spine as she gets her bearings.

JARVIS says there are only six heat signatures inside, but there’s something about his tone that unsettles her. Half his sensors are down, leaving him unable to do more than ping the Iron Man suit. He lost both communications and audiovisual feeds hours ago, and it’s only his reading on Tony’s vital signs that’s kept him from calling in further backup. He’s grown more autonomous over the years, capable of flying the suit when Tony is unconscious and taking action without direction as long as it doesn’t contradict his existing programming.

Combined with Natasha’s cryptic note and the spoofed trackers good enough to fool SHIELD, Pepper prepares for the worst and brings the weapons systems up with two quick blinks, ready to fire at the slightest sign of trouble.

An overhead electric lantern lights the circular cobblestone driveway in the front of the house. The suit wasn’t built for stealth, so she doesn’t try to hide her approach when she draws up close to the door, unable to justify crashing in through a window when JARVIS doesn’t trust his sensors.

She leaves him with instructions to notify SHIELD if he doesn’t hear from her within an hour before ringing the doorbell, feeling slightly ridiculous performing such a mundane action while suited up.

Agent Phil Coulson answers the door. Visible beneath his suit jacket, the white dress shirt he’s wearing is stained with a deep red colour that can only be blood. It’s centered around where his heart would be.

He bears a striking resemblance to a zebra.

“I think you’d better come inside,” he says.

-

The connection between JARVIS and the Rescue suit drops out as soon as Pepper steps over the threshold. Coulson’s bland, perfunctory smile does not falter, leaving her unsure if the communications blackout is his doing or not. Looking at the red slashes through the phone call and JARVIS applets reminds her of the time they played three truths and a lie and Phil told her about the poker game in Sicily where he cleaned out the heads of three major families. He never did tell her what the lie was.

Coulson leads her to the living room, a dusty old room with plastic sheets covering the couch and coffee table. There she finds Clint standing in the corner, his back to the wall with one booted foot braced against it. He spares only the briefest glances for her before returning to tracking Coulson’s movements carefully, his arms crossed over his chest.

Clint clears his throat and then Natasha slides out of a doorway to Pepper’s left. And another directly in front of her. “Now it’s a party,” one of the two Natashas says. Both have sidearms drawn and levelled at Pepper. The suit would deflect the bullets, but Pepper raises her gauntleted hands to either side of her head in a gesture of surrender anyways. One of them, the real Natasha – their Natasha – knows that, but the other might not.

“We need to discuss your definition of party,” Bruce says, and only then does Pepper realize he’s been in the room the whole time, curled up in the window seat with the white-knuckled fingers of one hand wrapped around Mjolnir’s handle. Thor takes a step in front of him, putting his back to Bruce and his hammer alike.

“I’m sure you have questions,” Coulson says.

“Don’t we all?” Tony says, slipping into the room behind the Natasha on her left with Steve on his heels. Her heart slows down a little to see him perfectly intact, though he’s back in the clothes he’d been wearing before the battle, jeans and a threadbare long sleeve shirt with a hole stretched out in the center where the arc reactor used to sit. Together the two layers are thick enough that the absence of light isn’t obvious, in case one of their number is operating under outdated information.

The Iron Man suit is nowhere to be found, but when he crosses his arm the sleeve rides up to show that he’s still wearing the bracelets that can be used to call it. It must be how JARVIS is monitoring his vital signs. She wonders if the bracelets are still functional, or if the jammed signals will affect them too.

“I’ll start,” Clint says. “Pretty sure you’re dead, sir.”

“So you’ve said,” Coulson says.

“Because it’s not as if the abstract expressionism on your shirt doesn’t say the same thing,” Tony snaps. Coulson shifts slightly, and his jacket resettles itself on his shoulder, the jacket covering the worst of the blood stain from Loki’s scepter.

“I witnessed your death,” Thor says quietly. “Do you mean now to claim it was a falsehood?”

Steve steps out from behind Tony to stand in the center of the room. “Aside from how this came to pass, Clint has vouched for Agent Coulson’s identity, so if everyone could lower their weapons for right now…” he says with a pointed look at the two Natasha clones, who mirror each other’s movements as they holster their weapons.

“Thank you both,” he continues. “Now, I think it’s clear to everyone that something bigger is going on here. Agent Coulson, any information you have could prove useful.”

“The last thing I remember is confronting Loki on the helicarrier,” Phil says. “As you are all still standing here, I assume you were successful in defeating him.”

Pepper thinks about the hole in the penthouse floor where Clint arranged a smiley face in the rubble. It’s still visible through the clear glass patch laid over top of it, a designated coaster in the floor which Natasha in particular takes great pains to set her beer on. ‘Defeated’ is one word for it.

“How did you come to be here?” Steve asks next.

“I don’t know why I’m alive or how I came to be here in particular, though I have my suspicions. You’re familiar with the rest of the story. I woke up in this house as the rest of you did, though I regained consciousness in one of the bedrooms upstairs as opposed to the living room, leading to our rather eventful meeting.”

“Natasha almost shot him,” Tony informs her.

“It was a warning shot,” both of them say.

“Hell of a warning,” Bruce says.

“And the two Natashas?” Pepper asks. It’s the first she’s spoken since Coulson opened the door and therefore his first hint as to her identity. She retracts the faceplate and Phil blinks in genuine surprise, confirming gaps in his knowledge that would otherwise make her suspicious.

“Huh,” he says quietly, a soft smile crossing his face. “Good to see you again, Pepper.”

“Phil.” She’s missed his unflappable nature, a shared understanding of the dual nature of bureaucracy and its evils, his dry wit after a long day at the office. Despite this and despite the word of a teammate who knew Coulson longer and more deeply than she did, she has a hard time believing the man standing before her is truly Phil Coulson. The idea he might be is almost as painful as the grief of losing him had been, because there’s a small part of her that thinks it’s possible. Stranger things have happened.

“This resembles a psychological test I’ve undergone before,” a Natasha says.

“This _resembles_ a B-list horror movie,” Clint says.

“So what, we’re supposed to figure out which is the real Black Widow?” Tony says. “To what end? Because if this is a morality test, I’m not interested in playing.”

“Seconded,” Bruce adds.

“Anthony--,” Thor cuts in, looking solemn.

“What? Seriously, what? Because this glass house isn’t throwing any damn stones.”

“That is not what I was going to say,” Thor says reproachfully. “I too have seen this tactic used once before, many years ago.”

“Oh jeez,” Clint says, getting an inkling of what’s coming. Even Steve looks vaguely unsettled, shifting his weight onto one foot in an unconsciously defensive stance.

The creak of weight pressing down on a loose floorboard from behind them draws their attention, and they turn to see a green form shimmer into view at the top of the stairs, decked out in full battle armor.

“You are correct, brother. Shall we play a game?” The figure waves a hand, and three bullets freeze in mid-air a mere foot from his head. Clint and each Natasha keep their weapons fixed on him, fingers on their respective triggers.

“Ah,” Phil says calmly. “I wondered if this was your doing, Loki.”

Loki, Thor’s brother. She’s seen blurry photos of him from Germany, knows he was the one who killed Phil and masterminded the Battle of Manhattan, but somehow she imagined him as less formal and more outwardly bloodthirsty. To be fair, Tony had hardly been inclined to give a well-rounded description after being thrown head first through a window.

“I would have thought you’d be more grateful to me for your continued survival,” Loki says.

“I’m not interested in surviving that way.” Phil's voice remains perfectly level, but she still gets the impression he’s lost his temper. The quiet anger is often more deadly than the loud.

“And I see your little team has added one more to its numbers,” Loki continues. “I do hope it will be enough, don’t you?”

He steps off the staircase and reappears directly in front of Pepper. Only Steve’s grip on Tony’s shoulder keeps him in place. Both Clint and Natasha spin to adjust their aim, and Bruce gets to his feet behind her. “I know you. You’re Iron Man’s little girlfriend, aren’t you? Did you get a taste for playing superhero yourself?”

He isn’t saying anything the tabloids haven’t heavily implied, dismissing her as someone playing dress up, relegating her to Tony’s sidekick. They pretend to understand the dynamics that went into Tony’s construction and continued refinement of the Rescue suit; it’s an impressive feat, considering she hasn’t been able to pin those down for herself.  

“My name is Pepper,” she tells him. It’s been a long time now since she went by Virginia, and she’s going to meet him on her own terms. “If you don’t care for that, you can call me Rescue.”

“How fitting,” he says, a slow smile crossing his face. It’s not a nice smile, and she’s reminded of the images from Stuttgart of Loki towering over a crowd of people.

“What do you want, Loki?” Steve asks. Though his shield is lowered, there’s a tension in his muscles that suggests he’s prepared for the tide to turn.

“Very well then, let’s begin. Of the two Agent Romanoffs in attendance this evening, only one is real. Your task is determine which. If you are successful, Agent Coulson will continue to live. If not, I will take him with me when I leave.”

“There is mischief and then there is cruelty,” Thor says quietly.

“What do you mean by real?” Natasha asks. It’s not a question that could come from anybody else and she knows it, her face blank as she exchanges looks with her counterpart, both of them standing up a little straighter.

“One of you is a mirage, the ghost of what could have been called into existence. She is identical in almost every way, but has taken alternate paths.”

“You want us to sit here and pick apart her life while Coulson's hangs in the balance, is that it?” Tony asks. He exchanges a look with Bruce over her shoulder, who nods back at him to signify his willingness. Projectile weapons are right out, but the Hulk managed to hold his own against Loki in the most satisfying of ways the last time they met.

“I’m not doing this,” Clint says, arms crossed. “No. Not happening.”

“Do not test me. You will not like the consequences.” Loki waves a hand, the palm of his hand glowing bright blue. Coulson fades to translucent for a few seconds and Clint goes a matching shade of grey, though his focus doesn’t falter.

Thor steps forward, the picture of solemn. “What is the last thing you remember?” 

Needing a way to differentiate the two, Pepper notes that one has her hair in a ponytail while the other’s is braided. “Returning to the Quinjet after Rogers finished thanking the first responders,” Natasha with the ponytail answers.

Coulson’s question is, “What did I say to you when you signed on with SHIELD?”

“Short of Casual Friday, you’ll fit in well here,” Natasha with the braid says.

“May those who live in the shadows…” Clint begins, a private code of theirs by the tone of his voice alone.

“…be seen by those in the sun,” they finish. Clint nods, accepting. It doesn’t solve anything, but Coulson and Thor’s questions established the identity of both as SHIELD-affiliated at minimum and all of those roads track through one point. It appears that some things are constant between universes.

“A coworker accuses you of being a double agent. How do you proceed?” Bruce says. One of his arms is folded over the other at the elbow, a fist propped against his chin in a contemplative pose. He’s been quiet through this whole experience but that’s the kind of guy Bruce is, preferring to watch from the background until he gets the measure of a situation.

He plays well off of Tony, who has a way of getting reactions out of people for better or for worse. One of the tests for support personnel to the Initiative is how they handle Tony on one of his bad days, because Steve has yet to truly piss anybody off, Thor is _Thor_ , Natasha and Clint are in the official pecking order (though they take a particularly liberal approach with some directives), and nobody dares yell at Bruce. The agent that can weather the brunt of Tony’s impatience and come out the other side still willing to work with him is a rare agent indeed. They don’t make them like Coulson anymore.

“I’d investigate the agent making the accusation and their history,” Natasha with the braid says.

“I’d investigate the claim being made and its origins,” Natasha with the ponytail says.

Clint and Coulson exchange pointed looks, but say nothing.

They’ve been working their way around the circle, and Steve is next. Both women nod at him as if to signify their readiness. Neither has objected to Loki’s enforced rules and he doubts they will, not with what’s at stake. Steve knows from Natasha’s file that she’s been tortured before and that she’d probably tell him answering questions for the team is nothing in comparison. While they’ve kept personal details as vague as possible so far, Steve had never wanted to push her in this way. Her past is her business, and she deserves better from him, from all of them.

He squares his shoulders, stands up a little straighter, and asks, “Pancakes or waffles?”

“Cap,” she says, a hint of a smile playing at the corner of her mouth. “It’s okay.” The fact that she’s trying to comfort him in this situation boils his blood, and he digs his heels in.

“That’s my question, that’s what I want to know.” He turns to Loki and adds, “I think it’ll help me make an informed decision,” his tone dry as the Sahara.

“Waffles,” Natasha with the ponytail says.

“Pancakes,” Natasha with the braid answers.

It’s the simplest of gestures, just the smallest thing to get right in a situation that has gone impossibly wrong. It gets the ball rolling, though. Bruce’s next question is, “Paperback or hardcover?” It goes downhill from there.

Clint: “Pirates or ninjas?”

Coulson: “Mac or PC?”

Loki interrupts to say, “I suppose you think you’re clever.”

Tony looks him up and down with distaste, turns to Natasha, and asks, “Kirk or Picard?”

When Pepper’s turn rolls around, she doesn’t have anything prepared. She’s a strategist, sure, but her strengths lie in the interpretation of past actions rather than the analysis of theoretical ones. Ask Pepper how Natasha carries herself when she’s pissed off and hiding it, what type of shoes she’ll wear when she wants to communicate power, how she ends her day when she’s on her own time. Those answers she knows.

For the record, Natasha’s preferred evening is one spent watching noir films on a couch under low lighting, often with scented candles going in the background. Lavender, cinnamon, vanilla – there’s a vanilla candle on her side table now, actually. Pepper remembers seeing it when she was in Natasha’s apartment looking for—looking for the safe.

Suddenly, she knows just what to ask.

“Iron Patriot or War Machine?”

“Iron Patriot,” Natasha with the ponytail answers. “The redesign is a little tacky but at least it wasn’t touched by Hammer Industries.”

Natasha is very, very smart. If Pepper knows that her relationships are her strengths then Natasha does too. Pepper had read the situation wrong before. The code word wasn’t for Pepper to prove her identity to Natasha, it was for _Natasha_ to prove her identity to _Pepper._

Forks in the road separate the two, Loki had said. This is the world where Natasha has chosen to trust her in a way that doesn’t involve shooting that which is attempting to sneak up on her from behind.

Pepper smiles and Clint nods at her, his suspicions confirmed. “Hi, Nat,” he says.

-

It looks like JARVIS got impatient, because a SHIELD special ops team knocks down the door while they’re trying to figure out travel arrangements for the distribution of four people among three fliers. The lead agent on scene is a well-built man with twenty years’ experience on the job. He looks at the assorted Avengers, looks at Coulson, and hands over the keys to the helicopter without further questions.

Tony’s phone rings just as the moor house disappears on the horizon. With Clint and Coulson in the pilot’s and copilot’s seats respectively, the rest of the Avengers are crowded into the cargo bay. Pepper’s suit retracts into a backpack which rests against the rescued suitcase suit, Captain America’s shield, and Mjolnir, Thor on his feet alongside their weapons stash. Natasha is quiet, but Steve’s keeping an eye on her without being obvious about it. Bruce they install in a window seat with noise-cancelling headphones. He’s smiling so Pepper knows he’s pretty calm, all things considered.

Tony takes one look at the caller ID and says, “It’s for you, Agent.” Flipping it open, he answers, “You’ve reached the morning show with Tony Stark and friends. Today’s weather is cloudy with a chance of reincarnations, so pack an umbrella.”

“Put him on, Stark,” they hear on the other end of the line.

Tony holds the phone out flat in the palm of his hand, flicking something on the touch screen. A holographic photo of Nick Fury emerges from with the display. “You’re on speaker,” Tony says with a significant look at Coulson.

“Two birds in the hand,” Fury says.

Coulson holds a hand up to stop their inquiries before replying, “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest.”

There’s a long silence before Fury says, “Jesus Christ, Phil,” sounding every bit like he’s about to start spiking his coffee with 80 proof at minimum.

“Sir.”

“When do you land?”

“Just under three hours.”

“I’ll expect a full report then, starting with how the fuck you ended up in Scotland. Good work, Avengers.” Fury hangs up before they can get a word in edgewise, and Coulson smiles.

“I missed Nick,” he says.

Tony bites his tongue for an impressively long time before deciding it needs to be said, damn the consequences.

“ _Nick_?”

-

Pepper plays a hunch and goes looking for Clint on the balcony of Stark Tower. This time of day the sun hangs low in the sky but the streetlights have yet to come up, washing out the city below them in muted colours. It appears to blur the motion of life carrying on beneath their feet, the good and the bad, people crying over loved ones and fighting over dinner and gearing up for a long day’s night. Like the view from the Malibu house, Tony has recreated the feeling of isolation, designing a space to be alone while affording them the opportunity to people watch.

A light breeze brushes her hair off her neck when she approaches her target, heels clicking on the concrete. The view from this height is dizzying until you get used to it, the sheer vertical drop sending a shiver up her spine, but she’s grown fond of living in this city and the people they’ve turned into since making the transition.

She passes him one of the two travel mugs as she says, “You looked like you needed coffee.”

“This is decaf,” he notes after a sip.

“You also looked like you needed sleep.”

He salutes her with his cup. She takes that as a tentative invitation to join him and leans on the railing next to him, her forearm brushing up against his. She holds her own mug in a loose grip over the edge, letting the rising steam clear her sinuses.

“Nat tell you where to find me?” he asks after a long minute.

“Phil did, actually.” He looks up sharply and she rephrases.

“Before he – well, before – he told me that his partner sought out high, isolated spaces during times of extreme stress. He didn’t mind it because it meant he always knew where to find them. This place fits that description pretty well.” She waits a beat, then adds, “Of course, he also told me his partner’s name was Clara, so.”

“It’s nothing personal. Habit in our line of work.”

“Please don’t apologize on his account, I’m sure I’ve lied to him an equal number of times over less important things.” He raises an eyebrow, and she clarifies. “SHIELD and SI are allies but don’t always end up on the same page. Phil and I have an understanding built on NDAs from both sides and an agreement that some things are better left unsaid.”

He laughs and she smiles herself, looking down. At ground level, she sees a little boy lecturing a German Shepherd larger than he is. The dog listens patiently, tail wagging, and waits for him to finish speaking before standing up on his hind legs to place his paws on the kid’s shoulder and lick his face.

“When did you figure out we were together?”

“I didn’t suspect until I saw the two of you together yesterday, actually. Had me completely fooled.”

“He’s great at keeping your attention where he wants it. Get him to tell you about the convenience store robbery and the flour, I have the security footage saved to my hard drive.”

“Robbery, flour, check,” she says, and doesn’t ask why he still has footage of someone he’d thought lost to him until just yesterday. For three months in 2008, she kept a photo of Tony on her mantelpiece. It featured Tony in his workshop sitting cross-legged on one of his holographic workbenches, trying to coax Dummy into giving her left shoe back. She gets it.

(She still has the photo, which now sits on her desk at work. Tony hasn’t spent enough time there to notice it yet, she estimates it’ll take him another three months.)

“I’d say the two of you should come to dinner so we can meet you properly, but I already know Phil’s a secret Firefly fan and you knit during your downtime.”

“It’s great for manual dexterity.”

“And we love the Avengers pillow cases in the living room, we do.”

“Yours will be done soon. Hell, it might even be done by breakfast.”

“What I’m saying is I’m happy for you two. And I don’t know whether you’ve discussed telling the rest of the team, but I should probably give you a heads up that Tony’s got the building blueprints out again and you should have a talk with him soon if that isn’t going to be necessary.”

“Will do,” Clint says, returning to his coffee. Pepper takes a sip of her own as they lapse back into a comfortable silence, staying out on the balcony until the sun has set for the day, their coffee has grown cold, and Natasha calls to let them know Coulson’s out of debrief.

-

In the car on the way back from SHIELD’s NYC office, Steve takes the front seat and puts the divider up to give Coulson and Natasha as much privacy as he can. She can’t find a way to thank him that doesn’t involve explaining why this is above and beyond the call, so she says nothing and resolves to order the chocolate pastries from the little French bakery two blocks over.

Coulson was able to obtain a shower at some point in the debrief and has since changed out of the clothes he once died in, the bloodied shirt and jacket replaced with fresh ones. Apparently Fury had Coulson’s measurements on file; in the grand scheme of today, this is less surprising than it rather ought to be.

It’s a quiet drive, because Coulson is too practical to say ‘you didn’t need to do this’ and Natasha too kind to reply ‘I really did.’

Instead she says, “Bruce is making lasagna tomorrow tonight. Will you be joining us?”

“I look forward to it.”

-

In switching from the button down blouse to more casual clothing, Pepper runs her fingertips over the unblemished skin of her lower abdomen that had been an incision site early this morning. A second hand overlaps hers, and Tony’s other arm snakes around her waist. He rests his head on her shoulder and says, “So, I seem to remember something about you having surgery this morning.”

“Good memory.”

“Your appendix play nice?”

“I think it was properly threatened into submission, yes.”

She feels more than she sees him smile, leaning back against his chest and turning her head to kiss him properly.

“I’m a little late for dinner,” he says, and she laughs.

“I’ll give you a raincheck. Extenuating circumstances.”

-

When Natasha gets back to her apartment, the first thing she notices is that the box with Pepper’s name on still sitting on the coffee table. Turning it over in her hands, she wonders if Pepper noticed the key taped to the bottom. It opens a compartment hidden underneath her couch which contains a second letter to be opened in the event of her death.

In returning it to its rightful place in the bookcase safe, she comes across Coulson’s box. The letter is for him but the vodka is for her; off duty, beer is actually Phil’s drink of choice. She twists the top off the bottle, closing the safe and tracking back through the living room to find a glass. A knock on her door sounds just as she begins to pour.

She opens the door to find Steve, Bruce, and Thor standing there. Bruce is holding a tray of cheese, chicken, and pepper-laden nachos while Thor has brought a bowl of popcorn large enough to daunt the average mortal. Steve holds out a selection of DVD cases for her perusal with a casual, “Would you care for company?”

“You know JARVIS keeps a media collection on a central server, right?” she asks.

“This seemed more tangible.”

She can’t fault his point and steps aside to let them in. Bruce places his tray of nachos on an oven mitt on her coffee table, setting a collection of plates down beside them.

“What are we in the mood for this evening, men?” she asks.

“It is your choice,” Thor says.

She considers the matter a moment, pouring them each a shot. Steve and Thor have high enough tolerances so as to make the alcohol moot, but the round is the gesture if not the point. What surprises her most about today is that the instinct for retaliation isn’t there. She has no desire to see her teammates laid out in the way she was today. It’s a step she hadn’t realized she’d taken, a point in her favour for the tallies they all keep. She drains her glass, smiling to herself. This moment is a celebration in spirit if not in name, and these are the people she would celebrate with.

The boys look unnerved by her silence. Bruce elbows Thor, who in lieu of appropriate platitudes proffers the bowl of popcorn.

“I’d rather not,” she says. As it turns out, what she wants most is the ability not to choose. Her counsel is her own again, and if that means an evening of Bruce’s somewhat disheartening documentaries about the state of the world or Thor’s light on plot heavy on gratuitious explosions action films or Steve’s peculiar dartboard approach to pop culture catch-up which had resulted in their viewing the sequel before the original, she’s okay with that.

“I have just the thing,” Steve says. “JARVIS, random selection from among the top twenty-five films in the collection by play count, additive.”

“Queuing now.”

-

“I believe I owe you an apology.”

Clint looks up from the apple he’s carving to see Phil leaning in the doorframe of the kitchen with his arms crossed over his chest. From Clint’s perch on the countertop, he notes a sadness in Phil’s posture familiar enough to be an known quantity. They always knew one might predecease the other, but there’s a difference between accepting that risk and making peace with it. Clint never did manage to get the hang of the second.

“Did you at any point choose to keep your continued survival from me?” Clint asks.

“No,” Coulson grants. He doesn’t move, holding his position in the doorway. Clint aches to touch him, but Phil has a Thing about not taking the easy way out of tricky situations that Clint loves him for and they can’t get to the touching portion of the evening until they get through this conversation first.

“Then I’ll accept a promise in its place.”

“What am I promising?”

Clint looks down at his apple, where he’s carved out a heart with a arrow through it into the skin. It’s sweet, but it’s been months now since they laid Coulson to rest and sweet isn’t quite what he’s looking for.

“That you won’t do this again.”

“As you wish,” Phil says, stepping forward to place his hands on Clint’s hips. It’s not the promise he asked for but that isn’t Phil’s to make, Clint knows that in the way he always has. It’s the best he’s going to get. The idea that they could weather this storm only for it to happen again is acutely, achingly painful, but any way you run the numbers turns out the same. There’s only one acceptable solution to this dilemma. 

Clint leans in to kiss him and Phil’s calloused hands come up to cup the back of his neck, pulling him in close to deepen it. He smells like gunpowder and SHIELD’s off-brand shampoo but tastes like Phil the way he always, always has. Phil pulls him off the counter and they break apart, foreheads pressed together, breathing heavily.

“Why did Pepper tell me she’s ordered a ten pound bag of flour for the kitchen?” Phil asks. Clint smiles.

-

“Are you seriously watching Star Wars?”

“Take it or leave it, Tony,” Bruce calls back to him. Tony makes an offended note and grumbles that he can’t believe they started without him, but drifts over to the loveseat that Pepper’s already taken up without further complaint.

Clint and Coulson drift in shortly after the second movie by release date starts, Coulson perfectly composed but Clint’s shirt untucked. Natasha raises an eyebrow but Steve merely shoos them into seats, pausing the movie while they get themselves settled. The first time Tony opens his mouth to add commentary, Steve actually throws a pillow at his head.

Pepper takes a look around the room. Natasha, Steve, and Thor occupy the central L-shaped couch with Bruce in the recliner offset in front of them. Thor’s taken possession of a fresh tray of nachos, which rests on his lap. Behind the couch, Clint and Coulson are tangled up in each other on a futon they pulled in from the storage closet. Finally there’s Tony. She runs a hand through his hair and he twists a little bit to burrow deeper into her side, affording her a view of the Stark IM program he has pulled up on one of the tablets. There’s an open chat to Bruce in which the last message reads ‘Luke, I am your second cousin once removed.’

Not bad for a day’s work, she thinks.

Natasha leans in across the gap to offer her a bowl of popcorn. “What time is your first meeting tomorrow?” she asks, dropping her voice low to avoid disturbing those around her. Steve has super hearing, but he’s relaxed on the no talking rule since Bruce reminded him that they could rewind if necessary.

“Not until nine fifteen, but I need to be in the office by eight at the latest.”

“I’ll aim for breakfast at seven, then. How do you feel about waffles?”

**Author's Note:**

> Credit for the lines 'May danger create of us heroes, may fears always have names' and 'May those in the shadows be seen by those in the sun' goes to _A prayer for the twenty-first century_ by James Marsden.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
